The present invention relates generally to document handling systems, and more specifically to a novel method and apparatus for efficiently feeding a stack of documents toward a shingling station.
It is common practice in the automated handling of documents, such as mailing envelopes and flats, to progressively feed a stack of documents in a feeder station or magazine to a shingling station and then to a singulating station. The documents are then directed from the singulating station as separated single documents to sorting stations or other processing stations or devices.
Postal requirements demand that a high volume of documents be handled in a short period of time. Typically, document handling devices are required to process thousands of documents per hour with a minimum of sorting defects and product damage. If documents cannot be fed rapidly enough to the processing stations, system throughput is reduced.
Typically, the first stage in the document handling process after the documents have be placed in a container or tray with the labels facing the same direction, is to load the stack of documents onto some form of transport mechanism, such as a conveyor belt mechanism. The transport mechanism then directs the documents toward the various separators, shinglers and sorting devices.
Known systems and methods typically require substantial human intervention and action to load the stacks of documents from the tray or container onto the document transport mechanism. The operator must gather the stack of documents and place the documents on the conveyor belt so that all of the documents are in an on-edge configuration. This must be performed while taking steps to prevent the stack from falling over. Additionally, these steps are typically performed as the conveyor belt is continuously advancing the stack of documents toward the various processing stations. This is a time-intensive process and is often the limiting factor in achieving high-speed document processing and throughput. Such steps increase document processing costs and may even cause operator injury, such as repetitive stress injuries.
The documents are typically transported to an initial processing station, such as a shingling station, prior to singulation. Shingling results in orienting either the top or bottom document in a vertical stack, or the front or lead document in an on-edge stack, so that the forward or leading edge of each successive top, bottom or front document is disposed slightly forwardly or laterally of the leading edge of the next adjacent document, preferably by a distance of approximately one inch. By shingling the stacked documents, only one document at a time will enter a nip defined by singulating belts or rollers, thereby substantially reducing the possibility that more than one document at a time will be fed simultaneously through the singulating belts or rollers. The singulating belts or rollers then transport each document in an on-edge single file manner toward other sorting and processing devices.
Known systems feeding the stack of documents towards the shingling station encounter difficulty when the stack is leaning or is oriented at an angle relative to the shingler input.
Since typical shinglers divert the documents at a right angle relative to the feed transport mechanism, the face of the documents must be essentially parallel to the plane defined by the input of the shingler. Such systems often utilize complex and expensive devices to align the stack of documents in a plane parallel to the shingler input and are often failure-prone. Typically, the transport mechanism is adjusted or halted in order to fix the alignment of the stack. This is inefficient and time-consuming and decreases the throughput of the system.
Thus, a method and apparatus which significantly increases the efficiency of loading stacks of on-edge documents on a conveyor system and transports the documents so that the leading document is substantially parallel to the input of a shingling station would greatly improve the rate at which documents could be handled in a document processing system.
Accordingly, it is a object of the present invention to substantially overcome the above-described problems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel in-feed magazine apparatus which allows rapid and efficient loading of documents onto a conveyor system.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a novel in-feed magazine apparatus having a throughput of over ten thousand documents per hour.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a novel in-feed magazine apparatus configured to urge the edges of the documents against registration surfaces.
It is still an object of the present invention to provide a novel in-feed magazine apparatus that senses when the face of the stack of documents is not parallel to the plane of a shingler input.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a novel in-feed magazine apparatus that automatically urges the documents toward a parallel orientation relative to the plane of a shingler input.